Chapter 675: A Fox For A Sister

Astrid’s head snapped up.

"What...What do you mean?"

Nadia sank down onto a nearby rock, settling Aster in her lap. The fox immediately curled up, pressing its head against her stomach.

"You weren’t the only one who was lonely, Astrid."

Nadia stroked its fur with slow, absent motions, her crimson eyes distant.

"You weren’t the only one who had a hole in your heart. When you pulled away from me and stopped being my daughter—" She took a shaky breath. "It broke something inside me. Something I couldn’t fix."

"Mom..." Guilt clawed at Astrid’s chest.

"Do you remember how we used to be?" Nadia looked up at her. "Inseparable. We did everything together. You would hold my hand when we walked through the city. You would curl up in my lap and tell me about your day. Even when you couldn’t understand what I was feeling—"

A sad smile.

"—and I had to use Mika as a translator because my face wouldn’t cooperate, you never gave up trying to reach me. You never stopped trying to love me. And that..." Her voice cracked. "That meant more to me than you will ever know."

"Mom—"

"When I lost that connection, it felt like my life was falling apart." Nadia’s eyes glistened. "There were moments when I wanted to collapse. To break down completely. But I couldn’t."

She looked at her hand that could level a mountain and even destroy a nation with a gesture.

"Because if I broke down, the world would break down with me."

Astrid felt tears prick her own eyes. Her stoic, emotionless mother had been carrying this pain alone for years. Unable to cry. Unable to scream.

Unable to do anything but contain it, because letting it out would mean catastrophe.

"At first I thought I could just hold it all in." Nadia continued. "I thought I could push the feelings down, lock them away, and pretend everything was fine. And for a while, it worked. I had Mika to talk to, sometimes. He was the only one who could understand without me having to say anything."

She paused.

"But eventually I realized I couldn’t do it forever. I’m human at the end of the day." She clenched her fist. "No matter how much power I have, I’m still just a mother who missed her daughter. And if I didn’t find some way to let the feelings out, I was going to shatter completely and take half the realm with me."

"So you..." Astrid looked at the fox. "You found her."

"Aster..." Nadia lifted the fox gently, cradling her like a baby.

Aster looked at Astrid with those big blue eyes, still nervous, still uncertain, but curious now.

"She was a rescue. From a poaching operation on one of the outer realms. My team arrested the poachers, but..." Her voice hardened. "By the time we got there, it was almost too late. Her family was gone. All of them. She was the only survivor."

"Oh..." Astrid whispered.

"She almost didn’t make it either. She lost a lot of blood. And she lost..." Nadia hesitated. "Come here. Let me show you."

Astrid approached slowly, careful not to startle the fox. Aster watched her with wary eyes, her tails twitching nervously. But she didn’t run.

Nadia turned Aster slightly, parting the thick fur at the base of her tails. "Look."

Astrid looked.

At first she didn’t understand what she was seeing. The tails were all there, all seven of them, thick and fluffy, attached to the small of the fox’s back.

But then Nadia gently pushed aside the fur around the third tail from the left.

And Astrid gasped.

It wasn’t a real tail. It was a prosthetic!

A beautifully crafted replacement, so realistic that she hadn’t noticed even from inches away, but artificial nonetheless. Beneath the fur, where the tail should have connected to the spine, there was only a scarred nub.

"The poachers." Nadia said quietly. "They cut it off for the fur. They left her bleeding in a pile of her own family’s bodies. If my team had arrived an hour later, she would have died."

Astrid couldn’t speak. Her hand had moved unconsciously to her own third tail from the left.

The fake one. The one she had cut off herself, years ago, in a moment of self-hatred she still couldn’t fully explain.

"She’s just like me..." She whispered.

"Exactly like you." Nadia’s voice was thick with emotion. "When I first saw her, I felt this...connection. This pull. But it wasn’t just the missing tail, Astrid. It was the sadness in her eyes. The loneliness. The way she looked at the world like she expected it to hurt her."

She stroked Aster’s head. "She reminded me of my daughter. My little girl who was suffering all alone and wouldn’t let me help."

"Mom..."

"I named her Aster. It’s your name, really—just a little different. I thought..." She smiled almost shyly. "I thought it would be like having a piece of you with me. And every time I visited her, I would talk to her. Tell her all the things I wanted to tell you but couldn’t. All the words that got stuck in my throat because my blessing wouldn’t let them out."

"She was my replacement for you, Astrid. The daughter I could actually hold when the real one felt a million miles away."

Astrid couldn’t hold it in anymore. The sobs broke free—ugly, messy sobs that shook her entire body.

"A-All this time." She choked out. "All this time, I thought...I didn’t know if you even cared. You always looked so calm. So composed. I thought maybe you didn’t miss me at all. I-I thought maybe it was easier for you. That I was the only one hurting."

"I was never fine." Nadia’s voice broke. "Not for a single day. Every moment I saw you in the hallway and you walked past me without looking or every time I called your name and you pretended not to hear—it was like a knife in my heart."

"But I couldn’t show it. So I came here instead, held Aster and I let myself feel everything I wasn’t allowed to feel anywhere else."

She looked down at the fox. "She saved me, in a way. Just by existing. Just by letting me love her."

Aster chirped softly. Then she did something unexpected.

She squirmed in Nadia’s arms and let out a series of small, questioning chirps, her blue eyes fixed on Astrid.

Nadia’s eyebrows rose. "Oh. Really?"

Chirp chirp chirp!

"You want Astrid to hold you?"

Chirp!

"But sweetheart, you’ve never let anyone else hold you before. Not even the zookeeper. Not even the other foxes."

Chirp chirp chirp! More insistent this time.

Nadia looked at her daughter with wonder. "She wants you to hold her. She says...She says you feel like family. Like a sister."

"A sister..." Astrid breathed.

"Would that be alright? She’s never done this before. She’s always been so scared of everyone. Even me, at first—it took months before she trusted me enough to let me touch her. But with you..."

Nadia’s smile was watery. "With you, it’s different."

Astrid wiped her eyes with her sleeve and held out her trembling arms.

"Y-Yes. Yes, of course! Come here, little one."

Nadia gently transferred Aster into her daughter’s arms.

The moment Astrid felt the fox’s weight, the incredible softness of her fur, and the rapid flutter of her heartbeat, something inside her cracked open.

"Hello, Aster." She whispered. "I’m Astrid. I’m your...I guess I’m your sister."

Aster stared at her. Those blue eyes, so intelligent, so cautious, studied Astrid’s face with an intensity that was almost human.

Then, very slowly, she leaned forward.

One lick. Two licks. Her tiny pink tongue darted out and touched Astrid’s tear-stained cheek. Before—

Chirp! Chirp chirp chirp!

The sound was excited now, almost joyful. And before Astrid could react, Aster wrapped all seven of her tails around Astrid’s arm and snuggled into her chest with a contented sigh.

"She likes you." Nadia said, and her voice was full of awe. "She really, really likes you. I’ve never seen her do this with anyone."

That broke the dam completely.Astrid fell to her knees, clutching Aster to her chest, and sobbed.

"I-I’m sorry!" She cried. "I’m so sorry, Mom! For all those years! For pushing you away! For making you feel like you had to find a replacement because your real daughter was too stubborn and too scared and too—too stupid to just—!"

She couldn’t finish. The tears were coming too fast.

Nadia dropped to her knees beside her daughter and pulled them both into her arms.

"It’s alright, baby. It’s alright." Nadia pressed kiss after kiss to the top of Astrid’s head. "You don’t need to apologize. I should be the one apologizing. I’m your mother. I should have fought harder. I should have found a way to reach you."

"Instead, I just...let you drift away. Like a coward."

"No!" Astrid shook her head fiercely. "No, Mom. You’re not a coward! You’re the bravest person I know!"

"You carried all this pain by yourself for years! You couldn’t even cry about it because your tears would cause earthquakes. And you still—you still found a way to love me! Even when I made it impossible."

She pulled back, looking into her mother’s crimson eyes.

"Everything you did for me. Every meal shaped like a fox. Every bedtime story. Every diplomatic meeting you cut short because I needed you. You did all of that while carrying a blessing that made it almost impossible to show emotion."

And you never, ever gave up on me!"

Her voice cracked.

"You’re the best mother in the world! You always have been! I-I was just too blind to see it."

Nadia’s tears finally spilled over and so did her deeply concealed feelings.

"I’m sorry." She whispered. "I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you that day. If I had been there—if I had stopped them from taking you—"

"No!" Astrid pulled her closer. "No, Mom! That wasn’t your fault! None of it was your fault. It was theirs. Only theirs. Instead I should apologize for never understanding your feelings!"

"No baby, you shouldn’t apologize. You did nothing wrong. I was the one who wasn’t there when you need me the most."

"No, you did all that you could—"

"No, I’m the one who messed up—"

"No I—"

"I—"

Then a voice cut through the moment:

"You know, you two could stop apologizing to each other already and just accept that you love one another and move on. It’s getting repetitive."